Seattle is enjoying impressively low unemployment rates—the lowest point in 2018 so far was 2.8 percent in April. With so few workers to go around, how is an employer to fill open positions?

The answer to that question, for many employers, is investing in workforce development—that is, making sure that prospective future employees are trained and prepared to fill in-demand positions.

According to a new study from the National Skills Coalition, about 80 percent of jobs in the U.S. require candidates to have some form of training or education beyond high school. This doesn’t mean that most workers will be required to get a four-year degree to be successful. About 53 percent of jobs in our labor market are “middle skill,” meaning they require training beyond high school but not a college degree, according to the same study. However, only 43 percent of workers have the training they need to qualify for these middle skill jobs.

The need for middle skilled workers is apparent in several important industries right here in King County: the Seattle Jobs Initiative projects that there will be shortages of hundreds of workers to fill openings in teaching, nursing and computer support in the coming years, for example.

In order to fill these positions, employers are joining forces with community partners to connect adults with the skills they need to be successful. Community colleges have proven to be particularly effective partners in workforce development efforts locally, and across the country.

Through the Office of Economic Development’s investment in the Seattle Colleges’ Center for Working Adults, (CWA) the college is working to ramp up its capacity for public-private partnerships. For employers, CWA represents a pivotal partner for talent recruitment, retention, and advancement.

Seattle Colleges have a legacy of developing effective employer-training partnerships. For example, Vigor Industrial is the leading provider of shipbuilding, complex fabrication and ship repair and conversion in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska; they need welders. South Seattle College leases training space from Vigor, administers a welding program, and pays instructor salaries. Vigor currently hires about 50 percent of the students into welding, fitting, fabricating, and other trades positions, and has a list of other employers that other grads are often referred to. An entry-level employee can expect to make an average of $21 per hour as a pre-apprentice.

As a recent report from the Seattle Jobs Initiative details, local private-public partnerships in job training, like Vigor’s, are a win-win-win situation for all parties involved. Colleges improve the quality and relevance of their training programs, students improve their employment prospects, and employers secure a pipeline of workers who have the specific skills they need.

Participating in job training programs saves businesses money. The Seattle Jobs Initiative’s study of Shoreline College’s program, for example, found that businesses saved thousands of dollars on both training and labor costs. Partnering with community organizations is especially helpful for small businesses, which are less able to shoulder the costs of training staff on their own.

The Office of Economic Development continues to support partnerships that bridge the skills gap between workers and employers. Have questions or ideas? Reach out to us at oed@seattle.gov.

This summer, the Youth Maritime Collaborative’s first-ever South Lake Union Day event provided a chance for youth who are participating in internships or training programs to learn about maritime career opportunities, get hands-on experience with real maritime skills, and explore the history behind transportation and industry in the Puget Sound region.

Sponsored by the Port of Seattle, the all-day event featured hands-on activities from SS Virginia V and partnering organizations including The Center for Wooden Boats, Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI), Northwest Seaport, and Puget Sound Maritime. Over a hundred students from six local youth-serving organizations—King County Airport interns, Goodwill Youth Maritime Program, WA-BLOC (Washington Building Leaders of Change), Seattle Skills Center Vessel Operations Program, Port of Seattle and SS Virginia V–split into groups and rotated through several stations throughout the day.

At the first station, students boarded the historic Virginia V and were taken on a voyage around Lake Union. Crewmembers provided narration of departure and docking procedures, gave tours of the engine room and wheelhouse, and performed demonstrations of knot tying and firefighting basics.

A scavenger hunt inside MOHAI was a chance for students to explore the exhibit and learn about local maritime history. The Center for Wooden Boats’ station gave students a chance to row out together on an umiaq (a type of open skin boat, similar to a canoe, historically used by Yupik and Inuit peoples), while Northwest Seaport’s station took students aboard the 1911 halibut schooner, Tordenskjold, to learn about the fishing industry.

Students on the Virginia V learn about the engine’s operations from a crewmember.

The value of this kind of career exploration was clear from speaking with one student aboard the Virginia V expedition. A high schooler enrolled in Freedom School, the student got to know a few crewmembers and had the chance to ask them questions about the ship’s operations. The student expressed a goal of majoring in mechanical engineering at Washington State University: “I don’t really know what I want to do in mechanical engineering, but it’s something I definitely have an interest in.” Crewmembers were eager to answer the student’s many questions about their work, particularly in the engine room, where the student’s interest in engineering was apparent as he asked about all of the vessel’s many moving parts.

On his way out, one of the crewmembers said goodbye to the student with a handshake and a pamphlet with information about the Virginia V’s volunteer program, saying, “Hopefully I’ll see you here in a couple weeks!” Coming into South Lake Union Day, the student didn’t know that volunteering at a place like the Virginia V was an option. Now, he has personal connections with the crew and knows that he will be welcomed back.

That student, and many others like him, left South Lake Union Day with a new understanding of the maritime industry and the careers they could pursue in the field. Over one third of students who responded to an after-event survey said that they are now more interested in pursuing a maritime career than they were before the experience.

Maritime is a huge and vital industry with an aging workforce. In response to this growing need for workers in the industry, the Youth Maritime Collaborative was founded in 2016, comprised of members from the Port of Seattle, regional maritime organizations, youth serving organizations, industry leaders, educational programs and local government agencies. As a team, YMC works to increase awareness of and guide youth toward maritime-related careers through experiential events, high school internships and thoughtful career exploration.

The Office of Economic Development’s partnership with YMC is part of a larger effort to provide opportunities that give young people a window into Seattle’s economy and how they can join the maritime workforce. Employer tours, experiential learning events, and internships expose youth to maritime education and career pathways; events like South Lake Union Day show students first-hand that there are exciting, rewarding, living-wage jobs waiting for them in maritime that they may have otherwise never known about.

Have ideas for other career exploration experiences, or interested in finding out about upcoming events? Contact us at oed@seattle.gov.

With the first half of 2018 in the rear-view mirror, we’d like to look back at some highlights of the last few months as we look forward to supporting you in your business and in your career.

Our teams have been hard at work for you in the community; we are pleased to report that as of mid-June, the combined efforts of our Small Business and Key Sector teams have directly provided services to 503 businesses. Our “Only in Seattle” team, through community partners, served an additional 374 businesses. In addition to individual contacts, read on for just a few examples of community convenings in which our office is engaged.

Africatown Innovation District Lunch and Learn: In June, we were delighted to host Africatown in the Bertha Knight Landes Room of City Hall, where over 30 community and corporate leaders met to explore available resources and programs in support of a robust innovation district in the Central District. With a shared goal of preparing underrepresented youth for meaningful careers in IT and the creative economy, participants mapped current efforts, reflected on what is and isn’t working, and articulated their commitment to a more equitable tech economy. We thank GeekWire, Microsoft, HTC, HEREseattle, Seattle Colleges, Vulcan, Social Venture Partners and our City colleagues in Arts, IT, and Planning and Development for their time and energy. We look forward to next steps!

Peer Networking Event on Commercial Affordability: In our work with the Mayor’s Small Business Advisory Council, market and systemic pressures continue to make commercial affordability a significant challenge facing small businesses. In May, we convened about 15 business district managers from across Seattle at a local startup firm – Blokable – to discuss commercial affordability. The Office of Economic Development’s (OED) Only in Seattle, Small Business Development and Key Sectors teams, in partnership with the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDPDA) and Onpoint Real Estate Services, organized this peer networking event to share a model for commercial lease education workshops in Chinatown ID and Little Saigon, vet innovative solutions for affordable commercial space, and make connections between business districts.

Summer Youth Employment Experiences: As a part of our office’s efforts to provide a continuum of career-connected learning and work experiences for Seattle’s youth, every summer, employers across the public, private and non-profit sectors in Seattle open their doors to thousands of youth interns. We thank the private sector donors who have together contributed over $150,000 to support youth employment this year, and in particular, our valued partner JPMorgan Chase, who through five years of cumulative support, surpassed the $1 million mark in 2018!

Given our focus on equitable access and prioritization of under-served communities, including young women and people of color, we are thrilled to spotlight Zilllow Group’s “Shadow an Intern” event at their downtown headquarters. To better enable high school students to envision their careers and set themselves up for success, youth from TAF Academy, YWCA, and the Seattle Housing Authority enjoyed personalized tours of the Zillow office, and a panel focused on career development tips.

Until the fall, stay tuned to the Bottom Line Blog for updates, but in the meantime, please feel free to contact me if our office may better support you in your business and career!

Sphere Solar Energy owner Edwin Ngugi Wanji stands in front of the solar panel system his company installed for Hellbent Brewing Company.

Growing up in Kenya, Edwin Ngugi Wanji says he was the kind of kid who was always “trying to figure out how stuff works.” “A solar panel on my mom’s little calculator was always very fascinating to me, and I pulled a lot of those out as a kid,” he remembers. Edwin is now the owner and founder of Sphere Solar Energy, a small business that installs solar energy systems for clients across the region, and for communities around the world.

After a childhood spent dissecting calculators, cameras and radios, Edwin arrived in the United States and got a job working on a construction site, where he began working his way up in the field and picking up expertise along the way. He started working in solar energy about eight years ago, and left his job to start his own company three years ago. “The fact that we can fully solar power homes in Seattle, 100 percent, in the cloudy weather, was just a big, ‘Whoa! We can do this anywhere,’” Edwin says of his decision to go into the industry.

He took the leap into entrepreneurship out of a desire to do things his own way, and to pursue his philanthropic vision: “My goal was, you know, just a global goal, making solar energy more accessible to communities that typically would consider solar energy very expensive, and maybe are the ones who actually have trouble with those recurring costs, those energy bills.”

Sphere Solar Energy buys most of its solar panels directly from Pacific Northwest manufacturers and provides its customers both a 10-year warranty and yearly maintenance and service

Edwin shows OED staff the meter that monitors Hellbent Brewing’s solar energy system. On sunny summer days, the system generates excess power which gets fed into the surrounding power grid (and earns extra money for the business).

inspections for the systems it installs. The warranty is rarely needed, however, Edwin says: “Solar is very reliable and very low maintenance. It doesn’t go down.”

Edwin has big plans for his business: he hopes to work with more commercial-scale clients, such as the project Sphere Solar Energy recently completed at Hellbent Brewing Company in Lake City. With 72 solar panels on its roof, Hellbent is now home to the largest solar system on a brewery in Washington State and generates 30 percent of its energy. Edwin is particularly interested in working on projects with local schools so that he can involve the students in the projects—having early experience with solar energy means the kids will be more likely to apply the technology in their future.

Edwin didn’t make a profit on Sphere Solar Energy’s early projects, at first just trying to get his name out there and prove the quality of his work to attract more customers. As one of very few immigrant-owned solar energy companies, Edwin built his business without easy access to loans. “For instance, if I need to buy equipment or anything, I need to pay cash. I put money away and go buy it,” he says, explaining how he’s had to pay his business’s costs out of pocket due to a lack of financing.

At the same time, Edwin appreciates that he is in a unique position to help others pursue a similar path. While working on the Hellbent Brewery system, Edwin and Hellbent owner Jack Guinn invited low-income teens from the Lake City neighborhood to job shadow for a day. Edwin hopes that by seeing someone they can relate to—someone who arrived in the U.S. with $40 in his wallet—being successful in the field, kids will be able to see themselves working in the industry someday too.

Sphere Solar Energy is getting involved in its community in other ways too. The business is providing a solar system (plus maintenance and support) for a BLOCK Project home in the Greenwood neighborhood. The BLOCK Project aims to provide tiny homes for people experiencing homelessness in residential neighborhoods across the city, and are designed to be completely off-grid. BLOCK Project co-founder Rex Hohlbein says Edwin jumped at the chance to offer his solar energy services when he heard about the project.

Edwin’s humanitarian efforts go far beyond just Seattle. He is passionate about growing his company’s philanthropic efforts, since even small systems can make a huge difference to communities around the world that don’t have existing infrastructure. “A system that I can put on a house here [in Seattle], over there, three or four hundred kids would benefit from it,” he explains, describing a planned project for a school in Haiti.

His team has already completed a project in Kenya and has a project in the works in Haiti. Edwin says the impact of the new systems is clear and immediate. “I built a system in Kenya that’s pretty much running irrigation. So, a journey that took people a few hours just to pull water from point A to B, now is seven gallons a minute.”

Whether it’s in Kenya or in Seattle, Sphere Solar Energy’s mission is to make energy affordable and accessible to the people who need it the most. “I know the struggle to pay my power bills when I was broke. I can imagine the mother with families, assisted living, barely making ends meet,” Edwin says. “It’s like, ‘Hey, this $200 a month can go towards other things.” As Sphere Solar Energy continues to grow, it will continue to pursue its vision: “a world where energy access is a basic human right, and where that same human right does not harm the planet.”

You can learn more about Sphere Solar Energy—and how you may be able to put your monthly energy bill towards other things—on their website, or by connecting with them on Facebook.

This summer, Zillow Group hosted an innovative new event for local high school students aimed at helping kids envision their future careers and learn skills to set themselves up for success. The “Shadow an Intern” event brought high schoolers from TAF Academy, YWCA, and the Seattle Housing Authority to Zillow Group’s downtown headquarters.

“Giving back to the community where we live and work is an important part of who we are at Zillow Group,” said Samantha Tripoli, Social Impact Manager, Zillow Group. “By hosting students from a variety of organizations across the area – including our Home Project partner Seattle Housing Authority – it is our goal to introduce them to careers in STEM that are within their reach, right here in their backyard.”

To start the day, the kids split into groups and paired up with current Zillow Group interns and employees who guided their groups up and down the tower of office space, answering questions and introducing staff from teams across the company. Meeting the different departments gave students the chance to see the breadth of their career options at a big company like Zillow Group—they could be a storyteller on the communications team, a hacker with the security team, an economist on the data analysis team, an event planner on the facilities team, and much more.

A panel of Zillow Group employees presents to the group of students.

The tour was followed by a short panel with a few Zillow Group employees who shared their career stories and advice on looking for jobs. One panelist encouraged students to get to know people in companies or industries that they are interested in, since having a connection can help get one name to the top of a stack of hundreds of applications. Another advised the youth to “spend a lot of time prepping for interviews, get to know the company,” speaking to her own experience in what she looked for as a hiring manager.

After lunch, the kids split into groups again for an afternoon spent working on a new product and designing a website to market their idea. Working with a Zillow Group staff member, the students came up with a concept for a new home product, created a prototype, and prepared a three-minute commercial. The students then got a crash course in coding by working one-on-one with a Zillow Group intern to build a webpage for their new product.

The high schoolers ended their day by reflecting on what they learned and thinking about what job they would want at Zillow Group. (After a day spent looking out at the tower’s Elliot Bay views, plus the never-ending snacks from Zillow Group’s many staff kitchens, the consensus seemed to be “I definitely want to work here one day,” as one student put it.)

Zillow Group’s Shadow an Intern event was a creative way to get young people excited about their future careers, which is especially important for students coming from low-income households who might be lacking connections, resources and career support from their family. The Office of Economic Development looks forward to working with Zillow Group and other employers in the future to connect youth with internships and other career experiences.

While not every business has the means to host interns through the City’s youth employment program, employers can always find creative ways to support Seattle’s future workforce. To get ideas on how you can connect with your next generation of employees, reach out to us at oed@seattle.gov.

Today, the Seattle Office of Economic Development announced a first-of-its-kind partnership to support economic development within the transgender community with Ingersoll Gender Center. The partnership will provide Ingersoll with $100,000 in new funding to provide job coaching, training, gender affirming clothes and other support for transgender and gender non-conforming workers in Seattle.

“We are proud to partner with Ingersoll Gender Center, who have been doing incredible work in the transgender community for decades,” said Rebecca Lovell, Acting Director of the Office of Economic Development. “With this new support from the City, Ingersoll will be able to meaningfully expand their vital services and further our shared goal of achieving equity throughout our diverse workforce.”

“Trans and gender non-conforming communities have been navigating barriers to employment like ID documents, discrimination, institutional violence, and harassment for decades,” said Ingersoll’s Economic Justice Coordinator Grayson Crane. “It is exciting to offer resources that allow trans and gender non-conforming people to build our own lives on our own terms which, in this case, includes seeking and obtaining work within their values. Ingersoll envisions a world in which trans and gender non-conforming people are able to build and determine the course of their own lives—this partnership leverages important resources from the city to continue and advance the care work that our communities have created and held.”

Transgender and gender non-conforming community members face barriers in many aspects of their lives, impacting their ability to participate fully in the local economy. According a 2015 report from the National Center for Transgender Equality, 14 percent of transgender and non-conforming respondents in Washington reported being unemployed, compared to the 4.6 percent unemployment rate of the general public. The number was even higher for black respondents, at 26 percent. Further, 16 percent of respondents reported having lost a job in their lifetime due to their gender identity or expression.

This partnership with the City substantially expands the reach of Ingersoll’s Seattle Trans Economic Empowerment Program (STEEP) and invests in strategies that directly address the challenges transgender people face in the workplace. In the next year, Ingersoll will provide individual job skills coaching sessions, host workshops focused on developing soft job skills, support job fairs, and provide access to gender affirming professional attire.

Ingersoll will also host monthly legal clinics focused on addressing issues with legal identity documents, including support for transgender people who have faced criminal charges at some point. At the same time, Ingersoll will expand its education and outreach efforts with local employers to foster safe, supportive work environments for transgender and gender-diverse employees. Businesses can reach out to Ingersoll at info@ingersollgendercenter.org to learn more.

Ingersoll Gender Center is an organization of, by and for transgender and gender diverse people that has been supporting its community since 1977. Up to this point, Ingersoll has been primarily volunteer-driven and had limited staffing and organizational capacity. This new funding allows Ingersoll to substantially build out the STEEP program, creating program metrics, sustainable practices, and sustainable fundraising strategies.

Last year, over 3,000 local youth were employed at organizations and companies across the city through Seattle’s Youth Employment Initiative. This spring, employer partners old and new prepared to host 2018’s round of summer interns through a series of trainings and workshops provided by the City and Educurious. New this year was an Equity and Community Building training, aimed at preparing intern supervisors to have meaningful, productive and welcoming relationships with their interns.

The Initiative connects low-income youth who experience racial, social and economic disparities with professional opportunities they may not otherwise have access to. The Equity and Community Building training focused on helping managers understand their own biases and learn to create an inclusive workplace, so that interns will be set up for success in what will be, for many, the first professional experience of their lives. “This matters, if we’re bringing interns into organizations that might be predominantly white,” said Maketa Wilborn, one of the employer training facilitators, during the third and final round of training offered.

Wilborn and co-facilitator Fleur Larsen led the group of employers from a diverse array of sectors and industries—everything from the Seattle Maritime Academy to the Royal Room to Cafe Red and many more—through the three-hour agenda. The class unpacked the meaning of diversity, a word that “has been played-out” and that too often “centers whiteness” as Wilborn put it, and discussed the importance of centering equity in all work.

“Presenters like Fleur and Maketa want to hear what diversity means to each individual who chose to participate and help people come to their own conclusions about how they can make changes, if any, within their organization to be more welcoming and open to diversity of all kinds,” said Educurious’s Blake Konrady. “My favorite quote from the training is ‘my normal is not your normal’ and trying to understand different perspectives in the workplace.”

After a crash course in understanding systemic racial inequity, participants were asked to stand and move to different corners around the room depending on where they grew up. Once grouped by geography, the class partnered up to examine cultural norms they live and operate with, both in terms of the area they live in but also in terms of the sector they work in. Seattle’s reputation for passive-aggressive communication came up, for example, and representatives from nonprofit organizations in the room discussed the common issue of white saviorism in their lines of work.

Intern supervisors were asked to examine their own unconscious biases and learn to overcome feelings of defensiveness, guilt or resentment that can come up as a result of having those biases revealed. Larsen and Wilborn shared advice from previous summer interns on what made their work experiences valuable, and how their supervisors made them feel welcome and supported.

Participants left the class with a set of culturally responsive strategies to help ensure that interns would feel that they truly belonged in their host organization throughout their internship. One employer said the training “reframed my view of why we have interns at our organization,” while another said it helped them understand “what bias is and that you can ‘be a good person’ and still have engrained biases.” As a result of the training, one supervisor said, “I will spend more time getting to know my interns as individuals, and carve out time to mentor them daily.”

2018 summer internships begin this month and end on August 31. Learn more about the Inititaive here, and find more information on how you can get involved on our website.

Walking into SugarPill apothecary feels a little like you’re walking out of Seattle’s Capitol Hill and into a shop in Diagon Alley. Most days you’ll find SugarPill owner and founder Karyn Schwartz behind the counter, who opened the shop in 2011.

Schwartz is a homeopath and herbalist with a background in everything from social work to kitchen work; she’s had “a circuitous route towards being a business owner,” as she puts it. “What all of my experience added up to was not a lot of job opportunities aside from private practice, but a deep desire to remain in the public sphere where I could teach people what I know—so eventually I had to create a job for myself,” she explains. “SugarPill is my way of taking all the things I have learned and that I am interested in, and offering them in my own way, in my own aesthetic, in a place where you can find me in person.”

SugarPill sells a unique assortment of natural remedies as well as teas, chocolates, bitters and more—not that the food items aren’t remedies too. Schwartz’s favorite product in the store right now are chocolate-covered sesame toffee squares, “because they are also medicinal.”

Customers can expect to get detailed, personalized advice about the products they buy when they come to SugarPill: “My primary focus is on whoever is in here, in person, talking to me, and trying to understand what they need and what I can safely help them with,” Schwartz says. “We do very intimate consultations here, even while tending to all the basic chores of retail, such as ordering, stocking, cleaning, paying bills, answering the phones and responding to mountains of messages.”

Schwartz has staff to run the store a couple days a week, so that she’s able to have days off, but most of the time she’s a one-woman operation. Everything with a SugarPill label on it is made by Schwartz, and every product she carries from other vendors has won her personal approval.

As a queer business owner operating in Capitol Hill, Schwartz has watched the changes in her neighborhood closely over her seven years in business. “It’s hard to predict, or even plan, what will happen in a city that is changing so rapidly, and forcing so many communities out of their own neighborhoods,” she says. “That really takes a toll on brick and mortar businesses, as we rely on our communities to support us—and exist to support our communities—so I am hoping that the city will refocus on what—and who—is already here, and do more to preserve the fabric of community which cannot be replaced by shiny new everything.”

SugarPill has a long-standing relationship with the Office of Economic Development, which strives to act as an advocate for businesses as they navigate both neighborhood growing pains and the bureaucratic web of local government. “It’s so important to have people to talk to who understand the challenges of being a very small business owner, and who also understand the importance of very small business at a time when very large ones have so much influence over our lives,” she says of her relationship with OED staff.

Being a small business owner in a rapidly-changing Seattle is challenging, but Schwartz hopes to keep SugarPill going for years to come and is planning a “little re-launch” of the store later this year. Schwartz says SugarPill celebrates Pride month “by letting people know how proud we are to be a queer-owned business.”

“I love being involved in art projects, such as the “Still Here, Still Queer” projection piece that I spearheaded a few years ago. I always try to have some kind of installation in our windows, and, of course, we are here all weekend with the door wide open, happy to welcome people to the gayborhood.”

If you’re thinking about starting a small business, Schwartz has a few pieces of advice: “Love what you do. Take good care of yourself, and don’t be too proud to ask for help. Do something that matters to the world that you live in. Remember who you are, how you got here, and always give back to those who helped you along the way.” (Speaking of asking for help—you can always reach out to the Office of Economic Development for free consulting and support.)

The newly-expanded Pike Place MarketFront has a new tenant: indi chocolate, purveyors of everything from chocolate bars to orange-chocolate scented lotion to spice rubs to chocolate liquor infusion kits to chocolate mixology classes, and much more.

Indi is a family business: both of founder Erin Andrews’ daughters work at the store, facilitating classes and helping customers. Her husband helps make chocolate in the adjacent small factory, visible to customers through a glass wall. The business itself is named after Andrews’ eldest daughter.

Inspired by a family trip, Andrews first began dabbling in the chocolate business by working directly with farmers in Belize. After traveling back and forth to Belize for two years, she started indi chocolate as a way of bringing her business closer to home. “indi chocolate was started in my kitchen where I made cocoa butter-based lotions and lip balms. I started selling at fairs and festivals to be able to afford the equipment to make chocolate,” she explains.

Office of Economic Development staff smelling cacoa butter soap.

Indi was able to expand to a small retail space at Pike Place Market, where the business was housed for five years. The family produced their chocolate and other products to sell at home, in a commercial kitchen space attached to their house. Siena, Andrews’ youngest daughter who gave us a tour around the shop, seemed relieved at no longer having to do business in such a small shop with her mother and older sister.

The process of expanding into the new, significantly larger factory and retail space was “difficult and stressful,” but worth it, Andrews says. Along the way, she worked with one of the Office of Economic Development’s consultants, who provide free consulting for local small businesses. “One of the great surprises of working with the Office of Economic Development has been how fantastic the free one-on-one marketing consulting has been,” Andrews says. “Working with Lisa Gardner has really helped us up our marketing game and been a valuable resource for growing indi chocolate.”

Now that the business is settled into their new factory, Andrews is looking to expand even further, drawing on the fresh produce and products available daily from fellow Pike Place vendors. “Increasing the amount of local agriculture and dairy has been a long-term goal for indi chocolate, and this will allow us to make fresh and zero shelf-life creations that need to be eaten immediately to be enjoyed at their best,” she says. Indi is also looking to host more classes, events and tours as they head into the summer tourism season, and they hope to focus on wholesaling their products as well.

While Pike Place is known to host crowds of tourists in the summer, it’s home to a strong community of farmers, artists, chefs and other vendors throughout the year. “From the outside, many people don’t realize the importance and strength of the Market community,” Andrews says. “I love personally knowing our regulars. I’m often at the same table doing work alongside them or popping up to help when we have a line of customers.”

Siena Andrews rings up an order.

Next time you’re at the Market, drop by indi for the chance of a free sample of molten, cacao-of-the-day chocolate from one of their machines. Siena tells us that they make the world’s best hot chocolate, and her mother particularly recommends their take on s’mores: “We’ve worked hard to make a s’more I adore with an oat cake instead of graham crackers, our chocolate and our mole spice rub marshmallow freshly roasted for each guest. We’ve been hearing from our customers that it is the best s’more they’ve ever had too.” You can also order online, if you can’t wait to visit in person. (No fresh s’mores online though.)

Thinking of opening or expanding your own business? Get your questions answered on our Restaurant Success site, and get in touch to learn more about our one-on-one consulting.

Here in the Office of Economic Development, we envision Seattle as the most innovative and inclusive city to start and grow your business and your career. I wanted to take a look back on our first quarter, and invite you to engage with us as we strive to support you in your business and career goals. We have too many highlights to mention to date, but here are a few of my favorites!

Small Business Advisory Council: We were delighted to help stand up the Mayor’s Small Business Advisory Council, a group of 27 committed small business owners from across the city representing the diversity and richness this community, ranging from solar panels to hula skirts, and various stages and sizes of business. Knowing that small businesses are collectively the City’s biggest employer (over 200,000 are employed in establishments with 50 or fewer employees), we are exploring how the City can better support them through programs, policies, processes and resources. Check out the inaugural group here, and if you have ideas you’d like this group to review, please email us at oed@seattle.gov.

Mayor Durkan joined by members of the small business community at Elliot Bay Book Company.

Only in Seattle Grant Awards: Our small businesses are not just an essential driver of our economy, but part of the cultural fabric that makes our unique and sometimes quirky neighborhood business districts, and Seattle itself, so special. This year OED was able to award $1.2 million in grants across 23 neighborhood districts, as “seed funding” towards community visions of vibrant and thriving districts. Special thanks to Theresa Barreras for her leadership in supporting our local stakeholders, as they create a sense of place and promote ownership in their communities. Thanks too to Estela Ortega and El Centro de la Raza for hosting a fantastic celebration!

Life Sciences, Biotech and Global Health Roundtable: Seattle has some amazing assets in life sciences: Reuters rated the University of Washington the most innovative public institution, we have a center of excellence in immunotherapy, and with 14 times the national average of research and development talent concentrated in South Lake Union, we could very well be the city that cures cancer! For the Mayor’s first industry roundtable, Karl Stickel, our Director of Entrepreneurship and Industry, convened a group of executives across life sciences, biotech, and global health at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (thanks for hosting!). We heard not just about the challenges facing the sector, but a wide range of innovative ideas to support its growth. We explored the intersection of tech and biotech, and the opportunity to highlight the women in this field, who were, in fact, the majority of the executives at the roundtable—let’s keep the momentum going! Please reach out if this is a group you might want to join, or have any other great ideas about supporting the sector.

Mayor Durkan speaks at her first industry roundtable. Photo courtesy of Fred Hutch.

Startup Roundtable: Startup Advocate David Harris pulled together an incredibly diverse and wide-ranging group of startups, investors, accelerators and incubators for the Mayor’s March roundtable discussion. With thanks to Amy Nelson and our friends at the Riveter for hosting, forward-thinking solutions included the concept of “returnships:” re-engaging working parents as they rejoin startups after family leave. One of the most surprising take-aways from the group was what they saw as an under-utilized asset: the Mayor’s megaphone in promoting our City’s startups. Have a great story to tell? Let’s make sure Pitchbook doesn’t miss Seattle on this list next year. Get in touch here.

Small Business of the Month: This year, small business advocate and life-long entrepreneur Pedro Gomez has taken on the role of leading our Small Business team, and along with our empathetic and experienced advocates, has increased their presence across the City, launching office hours in every district, and amplifying the stories of the small businesses we serve. OED launched our “small business of the month” profile, and our first featured entrepreneur was Kevin Moulder of Cubes Baking Company, who hopes he can inspire “other creative thinking Mexican-Americans” and the Latinx LGBTQ community with the story of Cubes. Not only can you read more about it on our blog, but the piece got picked up by Seattle Eater!

Kevin Moulder at the front counter of his bakery in Wallingford.

Thanks for spending a few minutes reflecting with us, and while you can always get in touch with me here, you’ll hear from me again next quarter!